On Wednesday, California Governor Gavin Newsom continued in Patrick Bateman vein by harassing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis about vaccines in schools.

In our new series of — Hypocrite or Fraud?…

It's back to school for Florida today, where their Governor loves to rail against vaccine mandates. 

But what he–and all the GOP leaders–fail to mention is that every single red state already mandates vaccines for their schools. pic.twitter.com/UA2LAunZou

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) August 10, 2022

Sure, Hair Gel.

Unlike California, where the teacher’s unions pay him to get their dirty work done, Florida, and most other red states have decentralized educational systems with local control at the county, and municipal level. Further, they look to incorporate and protect parental involvement and input, hence DeSantis signing into law (after it was worked out in the Florida legislature) HB 1557: The Parental Rights in Education Bill.

Newsom has made it a mission to destroy parent’s agency to have oversight and input in their child’s education and health choices. He signed executive orders toward that end, and then told the California legislature to fall in line and make it law.

But, it’s a Democrat supermajority in California, so he’s got it like that.

While Florida county and municipal school boards set the vaccine policies according to their constitution and laws, Newsom attempted to trample on local school boards by forcing COVID vaccines on children without parental consent and without any concern for the child’s health and well-being.

Or any concession for medical or religious exemptions.

While done on former California Governor Jerry Brown’s watch, SB 277 is still a law on the books that Newsom has not lifted a finger to modify or remove. SB 277 removed any ability for religious or medical exemption on vaccines. The same senator who helped to push this through is trying to get Senate Bill 871, which will make the COVID vaccine a requirement to enroll in all California public schools, into law.

This is Gavin Newsom: Same playbook, different day.

I doubt that DeSantis or any Republican governor would do to its citizens what Gavin Newsom has done to Californians. But then, for the past two years, most Republican governors did not use a state of emergency and executive orders as an end-run around the will of the people and actual legislative governance.

The OC Board of Education's lawsuit to end the emergency is moving forward. Today the Judge said: "I don't know what science the Governor is relying on. Maybe we will find that out in this case."

— Kevin Kiley (@KevinKileyCA) August 12, 2022

A day later, feeling chuffed over trolling DeSantis and championing COVID vaccines, instead of coming off “presidential,” Newsom ended up looking stupid.

On Thursday the CDC announced that it was relaxing COVID restrictions to recommendations that actually follow the science.

Political winds, or a blind squirrel finding an occasional nut?

You decide.

With this new guidance, the @CDCgov has taken a substantive step toward ending lockdown-by-stealth, dismantling vax segregation & discrimination, and eliminating unnecessary disruptions in the lives of kids this school year. Good job, @CDCDirector! https://t.co/mEBQFVH75v

— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) August 11, 2022

Newsom’s house of COVID cards that he created with the still embedded state of emergency just keeps falling down, showing him for the failed governor and buffoon that he is.

So much for boosting that national profile.

But there must be someone on the inside who is seeing issues with his local profile, because all of a sudden, Newsom is concerned about the drought.

California should invest tens of billions of dollars in water recycling, storage and desalination over the next two decades to shore up its supply as the state gets drier and hotter, Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a proposal released Thursday.

It comes as drought continues to grip the U.S. West and the state prepares to lose 10% of its water supply by 2040, according to projections by the Department of Water Resources. The Democratic governor was set to discuss the proposal at the construction site of a plant to remove salts from river water that should be fresh, the type of project he said the state needs more of in the coming years.

His proposed water recycling targets, which would make treated wastewater safe for drinking, would cost $27 billion by 2040, his proposal said.

Approved by the California voters in 2014, Proposition 1 in was the last attempt to do something about the drought problem in the state. Eight years later, we’re still waiting on those reservoirs and infrastructure. If the California Water Commission—whose members are appointed by the governor—really wanted to do something, it would have happened by now.

But Newsom continues to talk out the side of his neck about water and energy. California Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher called him out on not only his water hypocrisy, but after the “homegrown team” under the banner of the Los Angeles Times wanted to talk about Newsom’s tough, climate and energy stance, Gallagher exposed Newsom’s forked tongue.

Newsom talks out of both sides of his mouth: 100% zero emission retail electricity when last month he pushed a budget bill that streamlined more natural gas plants to keep💡on. Calls for more renewables while his PUC is considering proposals that will disincentivize solar. https://t.co/yg3UB8D6dQ

— James Gallagher (@J_GallagherAD3) August 10, 2022

And after all this doublespeak on energy, and flossing about his so-called drought proposal, Newsom announced that what the state really needed to get things done and pull down more federal dollars is an “Infrastructure Advisor.”

What useless person would agree to such a useless position?

Enter the useless former Mayor of Los Angeles Antonio Villaraigosa.

From Fox11 LA:

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will serve as an infrastructure advisor for the state of California, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday.

Villaraigosa’s appointment comes amid $120 million in funding awarded by the Department of Transportation to California for eight projects.

He will be tasked with identifying priority projects in the state and helping to maximize access to federal funding.

“With this influx of federal dollars, we have an incredible opportunity to rebuild California while creating quality jobs, modernizing crucial infrastructure and accelerating our clean transportation progress, benefiting communities up and down the state,” Newsom said in a statement. “Antonio has the extensive experience and relationships to deliver on this promise and bring together the many partners who will be key to our success. I look forward to his collaboration with the administration as we build up communities across California.”

Going back to that blind squirrel analogy, The L.A. Times actually got this one right:

For Newsom, it could be smart politics to try to neutralize intraparty critics when you’re positioning yourself as a possible Democratic presidential contender.

“He’s clearly trying to consolidate Democratic voices,” said Steven Maviglio, a Democratic communications strategist.

Clearly. One thing you can say about Antonio Villaraigosa: he’s a loyalist and a foot soldier. He’s also desperate for prestige and relevance, so, he and Newsom are birds of a feather.

You know there is dirt to be uncovered over this appointment, and the first shovelful is how Villaraigosa is getting paid.

It’s always about getting paid.

Newsom’s press shop said Villaraigosa’s position “is supported through a partnership with California Forward, which will collaborate with him and members of the administration on local engagement efforts.”

By supported, it means the nonprofit is paying him $175,000 for five months of work, according to details California Forward provided about the contract.

The governor’s office did not respond to questions about why the state needed California Forward to pay his salary.

We’ll see if Villaraigosa lasts five months. It is a well-known fact that Newsom’s “advisors” rarely stay around very long.

Not sure how Newsom thinks this will help his statewide or national profile. All his public pronouncements amount to more bright, shiny objects to distract from high gas prices, rising inflation and crime, the inability to quell homelessness, and the fact that more people leave this state every day.

But as City Journal points out, Newsom lives in his own alternate reality.

California’s natural beauty and balmy climate are the envy of every state. Yet a strange thing has happened over the last two years: for the first time in state history, California has begun to shrink.

You wouldn’t know it from Governor Gavin Newsom’s air of public confidence. In the last few weeks, Newsom accepted a national award for education transformation and ran political ads to warn Floridians that their freedom is under attack. In both cases, he offered California’s progressive model as the right fit to reform the rest of America.

But his proud rhetoric doesn’t match California’s declining reality. Americans are voting with their feet to reject Newsom’s California model and heading to the very states that he criticizes.

But in delusional fashion, Newsom will continue to troll Florida’s DeSantis while ignoring the state he’s supposed to be governing.

We’ll see if this works out as a winning strategy locally or nationally.